WASHINGTON — Railroads made Chicago, and now a Chicago-rich White House wants to return the favor: remaking rail with a huge new federal investment in high-speed passenger trains.
The $787.2 billion economic recovery bill — to be signed by President Obama on Tuesday — dedicates $8 billion to high-speed rail, most of which was added in the final closed-door bargaining at the instigation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
It’s a sum that far surpasses anything before attempted in the United States — and more is coming. Administration officials told Politico that when Obama outlines his 2010 budget next week, it will ask for $1 billion more for high-speed rail in each of the next five years.
Yet for all the high stakes, the pieces didn’t fall into place until the end of deliberations on the recovery bill. And the way in which they did is revealing of the often late-breaking decisions — and politics — that shaped the final package.
As a candidate for president, Obama spoke of high-speed rail as part of his vision of rebuilding America. Campaigning in Indiana, he talked of revitalizing the Midwest by connecting cities with faster rail service to relieve congestion and improve energy conservation.
The time is right now for us to start thinking about high-speed rail as an alternative to air transportation connecting all these cities, he said. And think about what a great project that would be in terms of rebuilding America.
But the administration never emphasized high-speed rail when the House Appropriations Committee was writing its bill in January, so no money was included. The first real request came only days before the Senate Appropriations panel marked up, and the committee had to scramble to find room for $2 billion — in part by cutting other Obama priorities.
$8 billion of the stimulus goes to fund “hi-speed rail” between LA and Las Vegas. They don’t have a route, they don’t have RoW purchased, they have no grading done, they have no materials ordered.
So the “improvements to infrastructure” really is not going to build a railroad, its going to fund planning on how to spend more billions of dollars decades from now to build a railroad (maybe).
The major beneficiary is not the traveling public, it is Senator Harry Reid, the Senate majority Leader and Senator from the great state of Nevada. Your choice of which part of the pig this $8 billion piece of pork comes from.
I didn’t see anything that said that all eight billion would go to Las Vegas service. Reading the article in tonight’s Newswire, I rather doubt that. Eight billion bucks will be chump change compared to what’s needed to accomplish much anywhere, and there will be some accountability. I’m just watching to see what the DOT comes up with as its spending priorities.
Like Carl, I also can’t find anywhere in the bill any reference restricting the expenditure of the high-speed rail funding to Los Angeles-Las Vegas. My text search of the law failed to find the words “Las Vegas.” A Google search of the Las Vegas and Reno newspapers failed to find any mention of it, either – you’d think they’d pick up on it. A Google search for the key words “Las Vegas, high-speed rail, stimulus, $8 billion” only pointed to some members of the Republican Party and the news media making that claim without attribution of their sources.
Could someone point it out to me where in the law it makes this restriction.
Here’s what appears to be the relevant section of the law appropriating funds for high-speed rail:
"FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION
CAPITAL ASSISTANCE FOR HIGH SPEED RAIL CORRIDORS
AND INTERCITY PASSENGER RAIL SERVICE
For an additional amount for section 501 of Public Law 110-432 and discretionary grants to States to pay for the cost of projects described in paragraphs (2)(A) and (2)(B) of section 24401 of title 49, United States Code, subsection (b) of section 24105 of such title, $8,000,000,000, to remain available through September 30, 2012: Provided, That the Secretary of Transportation shall give priority to projects that support the development of intercity high speed rail service: Provided further, That within 60 days of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall submit to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations a strategic plan that describes how the Secretary will use the funding provided under this heading to improve and deploy high speed passenger rail systems: Provided further, That within 120 days of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall issue interim guidance to applicants covering grant terms, conditions, and procedures until final regulations are issued: Provided further, That such interim guidance shall provide separate instructions for the high speed rail corridor program, capital assistance for interci
I just heard it on the TV news tonight. I think it was ABC. I don’t recall it saying that 8-billion was the entire stimulus to go to rail or that it represented any kind of limit. It said 8-billion for a maglev line from Las Vegas to Disneyland as a pet project of Harry Reid. I don’t recall how it was worded, but there seemed to be an implication that it represented a disproportionate share being taken by the influence of Harry Reid.
This will lead to nothing, as all HSR bills of the past have lead to nothing. 8 Billion dollars will solve HSR in America, hardly, that might help fix the problems on the Northeast corridor. Maybe add a bit of capacity in the northeast, Joe Biden’ teritory! But, as with most of this bill, the money won’t even be seen for 3-4 years down the road, long after the recession will be over by what most economists believe.
If you want HSR service in your hometown, you should move to Europe, or Japan, as America will never have a truely functional High Speed Rail service except for some small pieces in very high population areas. If it can’t pay its way, it will not be built in America, and even if they get some of it built it will never go far. Americans do not like pet projects, and monuments to their leaders!
My take on it is that the bill does not specify the project, but some kind of a consensus is that Harry Reid is going to hijack the funds that the bill offers. That is what the story on ABC sounded like. I don’t think it’s a done deal though.
Who are the people in this consensus? How did ABC arrive at this conclusion, by a poll? Or do they have some sort of inside knowledge? What leads the people in this consensus to believe this will happen? This conclusion is in striking contrast to what I’m hearing and what we’re discussing in the railroad industry.
The bill has assigned the task of deciding which of the many potential projects will get the funding to the Secretary of Transportation and that Department. If that is not the place where such a decision should be made, where else?
Since Secretary LaHood is a Republican, I don’t see him especially motivated to send the money to projects in states with Senators from the Democratic Party.
It is obvious that the appropriation is not going to be sufficient to build regional 150 - 200MPH+ rail passenger lines radiating out up to 500 miles from every big city in the US. However, maybe it could make a good start at getting some 80 to 100 MPH routes going where existing travel patterns by other modes indicate that the rail service would be useful and attractive to the traveling public. While many whine that it will be just another big political waste of money, I prefer to hope that intelligent people will make rational decisions for the expenditures.
Although I also heard the Harry Reid thing and the maglev report on NBC’s news, I can find no basis for it in fact. The 8 billion was put into the compromise bill after the House and Senate had approved their respective versions by Rahm Emmanuel. According to one article I read, Harry Reid was as surprised as anyone. I’m sure he’d like to get his hands on it, but that is very unlikely to happen.
I just did a Google “Advanced News Search” for “vegas” and high speed rail", which should have - and looks like it did - pick out anything related to this. Although I didn’t look at every single link, I conclude that:
None of the “main stream media” (“MSM”) are printing , publishing, or saying anything to the effect that the $8 Billion is for Las Vegas HSR project only;
The most that is being said in the MSM is that such a project would be eligible, or quoting / repeating the comments of others that it is for the Las Vegas project;
It’s interesting to see who is saying that the $8 B will be for the Vegas train - mostly Republican politicians, bloggers, columnists, editorials, etc. who are against the “stimulus bill” anyway. None of them point to a specific section, commitment, amendment, or “understanding”, of course;
That last leads me to wonder about their credibility on this and other matters. Wasn’t it George Orwell’s book 1984 that introduced - or at least popularized - the concept of “The Big Lie” ? Why are they doing this ? [swg]
That said, there’s nothing in the relevant portions of the bill (as excerpted above by RWM - thanks, by the way, for that service* to us here) to prohibit the SecTrans from deciding that, “Yeah, all that money should go to the Las Vegas HSR project”. But I too doubt if that will happen.
Anybody who can do that spends way too much time with laws, lawyers, legislators, politicians, and others of that kind. As one who knows that first-hand, if I have some free time later today, I’ll look up what all those cross-references in the quoted portion mean, and post them so that there are no lingering questions.
Unless FRA is going to administrate the funds start to finish, and keep the funds out of state hands in a majority of the states, you have a bigger problem. Not thrilled with a new and inventive way to subsidize the rubber tired transportation officials.
I understand the concern that this Harry Reid story conflicts with the bill, but that does not mean that the story could not or did not happen last night on the network news. My ears don’t lie. The same story is running right now on the NBC Today Show at 7:00 AM, 2/18. They do attribute the charge to “critics,” and those critics are probably conservatives, but who else is going to criticize it if it is worthy of criticism? And besides, it is NBC who is running the story, hardly a bastion of conservatism. And moreover, NBC is not using the story to criticize the Reid critics, but rather to join them. The thrust of the story is pork in the bill. In any case, I don’t see how the story actually conflicts with the bill. It seems only like a possible result out of the more general language of the bill.